I live on a small dying river named the Mary's.. It was a decent steelhead/large trout river back in the day, but after excessive dammage and daming it is only home to thousands of crustacions, mayflies, caddis, a few stones, and lonely trout under 12in.. I usually use this creek as a testing station for my newer dry fly creations, to see how they float and attract.. And eventually I stumbled onto a few patterns that actually worked 20% of the time.. Normally my friend outfishes me maddly with his roostertails (I taught him the way's of catch and release though).. but these small patterns seem reliable. basically anything that floats and is tied around a size 22 will catch fish.
But, today when for the first time this year I lashed on one of these little bugs, I caught something I had never seen before, and again, and again, and.. you get it.. again.. In an hour stretch I caught 4 sickly trout around 6in, and 30some small fish with the largest being 4in, and the smallest being 2in. These little guy's resembled salmonoids in general apearence, but had a few major differences. Their spots where somewhat dull, they had one large fin on the bottom back before the tail, and one smaller one, and they had thin brilliant red and yellow stripes down their sides. I'll get some pic's up tommoro. Any ideas? I havent caught any big ones of these, so im thinking they might be full size already, or prefer deeper water when grown(not much deep water in the mary's)..

flyjkol

07-08-2007, 12:06 PM

Maybe they're some sort of chub or other minnow?

zimflo.

07-08-2007, 01:29 PM

ya, I thought about that.. Its just that I have never seen these guy's before in the 4-5 years Ive lived here..